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Updated: June 27, 2025
Catty said that yesterday she had begun to be afraid of Dorsy and couldn't bear her in the room. That was what made them send the wire. What had she been thinking of those five days? It was as though she knew. Dorsy said she didn't believe she was thinking anything at all. Dorsy didn't know. Somebody knew. Somebody had been talking.
"You could hardly even have come in for the sad end of it." Dorsy Heron said it was true. "It was you he was in love with. Everybody saw it but you." She remembered. His face when she came to him. In the library. And what he had said. "A man might be in love with you for ten years and you wouldn't know about it if he held his tongue." And her face.
There were little happinesses, pleasures that came like that: the pleasure of feeling good when you sat with Maggie's sister; the pleasure of doing things for Mamma or Dorsy; all the pleasures that had come through the Sutcliffes. The Sutcliffes went, and yet she had been happy. They had all gone, and yet she was happy.
She would have to get away somewhere, to Dorsy or the Sutcliffes. She didn't want to see him again. She wanted to forget that she ever had seen him. Her mother and Dan had shut themselves up in the smoking-room; she found them there, talking. As she came in they stopped abruptly and looked at each other. Her mother began picking at the pleats in her gown with nervous, agitated fingers.
He had disapproved of you ever since you played hide-and-seek in his garden with his nephew. He thought it served you right to be jilted. And there was Dr. Charles's kind look under his savage, shaggy eyebrows, and Miss Kendal's squeeze of your hand when you left her, and the sudden start in Dorsy Heron's black hare's eyes. They were sorry for you because you had been jilted.
Heron had died of a stroke in the first week of January. She had left Dorsy her house and furniture and seventy pounds a year. Mrs. Belk got the rest. The middle-aged people were growing old. Louisa Wright's hair hung in a limp white fold over each ear, her face had tight lines in it that pulled it into grimaces, her eyes had milky white rings like speedwell when it begins to fade.
He was saying something that she didn't hear. Then he swung round solemnly. She saw the flash of his scarlet hood. Then the coffin. She began to walk behind it, between two rows of villagers, between Dorsy Heron and Mr. Sutcliffe. She went, holding Dan tight, pulling him closer when he lurched, and carrying his tall hat in her hand.
Anyhow, for one evening in her life Dorsy was happy, dancing round and round, with her wild black hare's eyes shining. Mr. Sutcliffe. She stood up. She would have to tell him. "I can't dance." "Nonsense. You can run and you can jump. Of course you can dance." "I don't know how to." "The sooner you learn the better. I'll teach you in two minutes."
When he said "old Sutcliffe" his eyes were merry and insolent as they used to be. "What do you do it for?" "Because I like him. And because there's nobody else who wants to go about with me." "There's Miss Heron." "Dorsy isn't quite the same thing." "Whether she is or isn't you've got to chuck it." "Why?" "Because Mamma doesn't like it and I don't like it. That ought to be enough."
Kendal, sloughing and rotting in his chair; for Miss Kendal; for all women labouring of child; for old Mrs. Heron; for Dorsy Heron; for all prisoners and captives; for Miss Louisa Wright; for all that were desolate and oppressed; for Maggie's sister, dying of cancer; and for Mamma, kneeling there, praying. Sunday after Sunday.
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